MORE FEAST OR FAMINE : A SURVIVING SAGA

Irene Palmer

(Embezzler, a 44ft cutter sailed by New Zealanders Warren Johnson and Irene Palmer, has already featured twice in Flying Fish. Where will we hear from them next?)

August '95 : Papua New Guinea

Civil war rages in Bougainville, just a hop, skip and jump from our departure point, the Shortland Islands. The PNG government has declared all of Bougainville, including Buka, out of bounds to everyone and tenaciously enforces this ruling with its navy. Rabaul, the next closest port of clearance in PNG, has been ravaged by volcanoes. Where to go to clear? Forty-eight hours later we arrive in the once pretty and colourful Rabaul.

Three volcanoes erupted in September 1994, one blowing for a week, the second one for about two weeks and the last one on and off until April. Consequently the town has been deluged with volcanic ash for nine months -- and ash piled 12 to 15 feet deep weighs more than concrete when wet. Big buildings have simply collapsed after the rains and the town looks like a bomb zone. Rubble lies everywhere and three months later few roads have been cleared. Evacuation saved loss of life but not much else. No insurance is available, nor is government help. Burglary, looting, vandalism and thuggery are rife and the good people are struggling to survive. But rebuild they will. And in the same place! After all, it will be fifty years before the next eruption...?

In general, PNG is scary. In the towns, steel security bars stripe every window, door and vent. Offices have grills protecting their employees from the customer. NOBODY goes out at night. EVERYBODY locks their houses, boats, cars like they had the crown jewels to guard. The biggest growth business is security firms.

We have only met six boats during our travels here and most have terrible stories to tell, including rape and beatings. We have protected ourselves with nylon fishing line alarms rigged around the decks at night. I sleep with the flare pistol -- other weapons, which I am prepared to use if necessary, are strategically placed around Embezzler. Because of these problems we have only spent six weeks in PNG, but in this time have met some wonderful people and visited some amazing places.

The Telele Islands, at the eastern end of New Britain, are heaven uncharted. They consist of six small islets, totally uninhabited and therefore relatively safe, about five miles from the mainland. We spent four glorious days, there snorkeling from 0900 to 1500 on coral reefs that drop to infinity on one side and shelve to a white, sandy beach on the other. The diving was spectacular.

Getting through the reefs that surround eastern New Britain was hairy, and Warren had to blaze the trail by rowing the dinghy across with me timidly following in Embezzler. Thank God for American electronics and a handheld depth sounder. We travelled the north coast of New Britain for 120 miles without too much excitement, and anchored at Walindi Resort twenty miles from Kimbe. Unfortunately customs reared their unpleasant head, requesting that we anchor directly outside Kimbe itself. We eventually convinced them of its unsuitability as a yacht anchorage and were duly stamped legal again.

A full clearance, both on arrival and departure, is required at every customs port in PNG -- a costly, time-consuming exercise that achieves no purpose except to frustrate the yachtie and create a source of illegal income for the custom officers. We managed to avoid paying these extra fees, which come under a variety of names and have no official receipt.

The Manus Islands were undiscovered paradises, spoilt only by the tension of constant crime around us. We met some great people and discovered wonderful fruits called soursop and custard apple. I cannot even begin to describe the flavour of these, suffice to say magnificent. Most of the locals are wonderful people and quickly warned us who / what to beware of. They showed us Tuluman Island, born in 1953 by an underwater volcanic eruption and formed totally of obsidian rock. Their beautiful lime green snail shells (very unique), honest custom officers (also unique) and clean, well-kept town (totally unique) will stay as cherished memories. The roads were sealed, had curb channeling, and the excellent market and health facilities showed this island's politicians were using government funds for what they were originally intended.

The Hermit Islands produced a young man who remembered my brother's excursions through his very isolated part of the world twelve years ago. On arrival, after introductions, I mentioned that my brother had been a past visitor and Namo replied: `Yes. His name is Peter, his wife's name is Jo and they had a little piccaninny'. How's that for memory? The diving around the Hermits was spectacular with basking manta rays, friendly turtles and huge, juicy oysters.

September '95 : Indescribable Indonesia

As I write, we trundle along the northern coast of Irian Jaya. A total famine of fish and good sailing conditions, but the excitement of being in a new country coursing through our veins. I am no longer learning pidgin (me no larnim tok tok pidgin). Bahasa Indonesian is the popular language this month.

We were welcomed into Indonesian waters by strange sea conditions. In the middle of the ocean, hundreds of miles from the nearest land, we found overfalls and/or currents that knocked our speed back to 2 knots, formed a nasty sea and made life very uncomfortable, although mentally inspiring. I searched every weather and tidal book onboard for an explanation and questioned other cruisers, some of whom had experienced the same phenomenon, but the mystery remains. Can anyone out there help?

Tuesday 12 September saw us arrive in Ambon. Talk about a culture shock! The rubbish and sewerage pollution is unbelievable and NOBODY speaks English. Clearing entails visiting the quarantine, immigration, customs and harbour board officials, in that order, all in different parts of town, apparently down back alleys. It took us two days to complete this marathon task, but we had a great time doing it and knew the city really well by the end of it.

Shopping at the markets can be described as exhilarating and nauseating. No health regulations here~! Bamboo and wooden buildings put together higgledy-piggledy, narrow alleyways with paths full of stones and holes, running water that smells like sewerage, and hundreds of people hustling up and down with carts, backs, baskets laden. Fresh plucked chickens piled high ~on bare wooden boards, dripping blood. Dried fish, fresh fish and flies everywhere. Needless to say the only things we buy at these markets are vegetables and fruit, which are plentiful and in great variety. `Hello Mrs, Hello Mr' follows us everywhere we go and bartering becomes the entertainment of the day, as I whittle away at the price with the crowds building to twenty deep around us. If the vendor won't come down I walk to the next stall and am usually offered a starting price of half the previous vendor's, from which the bartering starts again.

Bechaks (bicycle-powered rickshaws) and bemos (Toyota vans used as taxis) are everywhere, screaming along at top speed, tooting horns, ringing bells and missing each other by millimeters. All smiling. No anger and very few accidents. It's like being on a stock-car track where everyone gives way to each other ... at the very last minute.

A problem in the gearbox of the saildrive unit, causing the gears to slip occasionally, tested us some what. The local boats are all shallow draught and designed not to need slips. They either lie against rough jetties in the 2-3ft tides or drive their boats onto a sandbank at high tide. We eventually found a slipway of sorts, some two months and many miles later, on Batam Island in northern Indonesia.

Skyscrapers, cranes and smokestacks monstrously appeared on the horizon. The big city of Ujung Padang, cloistered on the west coast of Sulawesi, took us by surprise after so many months of low, palm tree studded skylines. We dined out for $3.00 each per night, somehow managing to avoid ordering such delicacies as fish stomachs or rooster legs. Excitement plus!

The sand cays of the Tiger Islands are a lesson in the ageless habits of history. Nothing more than sand atolls that barely support a few coconut trees, these islands are packed with the villages of squid fishermen. Population growth will soon force a change in their family history as the village houses have already covered every inch of buildable ground on some islands. The basketed squid catch is buried in the sand to cook naturally, then packed and exported to Hong Kong, all within thirty hours of being caught, and all business is transacted from the beach. This income buys everything, including water, from the nearest city miles away, all transported by bugis pinis schooners.

The Komodo Dragon has got to be an Indonesian highlight. These creatures are incredible -- ugly, regal, dangerous. However the diving is a disappointment as many of the reefs have been destroyed with dynamite or cyanide.

One of my favourite places in Indonesia is Lombok. Exploring by dokkar (pony cart) is the only way to go if you want to see and feel it all. Temples on mountains, densely inhabited by monkeys, lime green paddy fields, rivers with bullocks and women washing, beautiful pott~ery, ornate weaving of both flax and thread, aureate wooden furniture, intricate silverware. Every village specialize s in a craft, the finished products being sent to Bali and Jakarta where the biggest tourist markets are.

First impressions of Bali can be very misleading. Being Australia's holiday playground millions of tourists flock there to eat good Aussie tucker, grab some bargains and get drunk on good Aussie beer. Consequently, the hawkers act like Aussie bush flies -- there're swarms of them, they're fast and hard to get rid of. Move slightly off the tourist milk run, however, and a totally different picture emerges. Excellent Balinese people, food and shopping at a tenth of the price.

Bawean Island, north of Java, was a treat after the big cities. The people were so unspoiled by tourism that our arrival in a village attracted a lot of attention. My attempts at Bahasa Indonesian soon relaxed them, to the point of some falling over with laughter. They piled up ten deep when I had my hair cut. Years later they will still be talking about that performance -- I'm sure I would be excellent at charades. It was also here that I found my first nudibranch. This amazingly beautiful little sea creature was happily sliding along rock and mud in about 3-4ft of water.

We stopped at many isolated islands on our way north, delighting in these warm and friendly people all the way. We dined on fresh crab, a lOlb bucket for 15000 Rp ($10.00), crayfish for 3000 Rp each ($2.00) and were amazed at the poverty of these very adaptable fishermen. Many excuses were found for gifts of blankets, clothes, fishing equipment etc, keeping pride and friendships intact in the process.

We crossed the equator! Our first time! Yahoo! We didn't have a party, shave each others heads or even get more intimate about it. No siree. We didn't have time. We crossed in true Embezzler style. Having pushed into 25 knots and current for several days, we got hit by a 50 knot Sumatra just south of the equator. It arrived like an express train, catching us with far too much sail, and we went over the `line' sideways, in both senses of the word. We were too busy, wet, and miserable to celebrate at the time, but made up for it at Tanjungpinang, a city on the west coast of Bintan Island.

Imagine thousands of garden sheds, unpainted, weathered, flush together, each sharing one common wall. Now put this picture on stilts, over the water, with planks for paths and sampans for cars. Add thousands of television aerials, and you have our view of the city of Tanjungpinang. These large and popular stilt villages have a variety of services to their doors -- post, taxi and floating mini-markets to name a few. The huge gap between the wealthy and the poor is blatantly displayed in this culturally exciting city. Spaceship-like jet boats race along the river, to be parked beside private jetties below extravagant mansions. Sampan families juggle their pots, pans, dogs, chickens and children in their 16ft by 3ft canoes as they attempt to catch the day's meal from the polluted waters, their total belongings afloat with them.

And still they smile!

(2112 words)